How To Use Career and Job Search Engines

There are many websites available these days that are completely designed to help people find a job. These websites can be fantastic tools for someone in search of new employment. The most widely used career and job websites are Monster.com, Yahoo! Jobs, Career Builder and Craigslist.

On career and job websites, there are usually several ways you can use the sites to help you. These include the following:

Job Searching On all of the websites mentioned above, there is a job search engine in one form or another. The job search engines are meant to be used to help you find job postings for the type of job you are interested in. When you use these search engines, you are searching by keyword where the keyword is simply the type of job you are looking for (e.g. Secretary). With the exception of Craigslist, you can also refine your search further by adding other search criteria such as the city you live in, job category or even industry in some cases.

Another way to search for jobs using these websites is to search by company. This method would be ideal if you had a specific company in mind that you wanted to work for. To search by company, you first go to the Search By Company page on the site. On that page, you have two ways of searching by company: Enter the name of the company in the search box to have the site find it for you or select the letter which corresponds to the first letter of the name of the company you're interested in and then find that company on the page that comes up. The searching by company option is available on all the sites mentioned except Craigslist.

One other thing that can be done with the job searching tool, is to save your frequently used searches. In order to save your searches, you must register at the site you want to save them on. Once you have your searches saved, you can either have job postings meeting your search criteria emailed to you or the job postings can be saved for you directly on the site where you can view them whenever you choose. Craigslist, however, does not have this feature.

Posting Resumes Another great tool on these career and job websites is being able to post your resume on them. Posting your resume on these sites allows potential employers to view your resume whenever they choose, to see if you would be an ideal candidate for a current job opening. If they are interested in you, they will either email you or call you at the phone number you have listed on your resume. Generally, you can post more than one resume if you are looking for more than one type of job.

While Craigslist does not allow you to post your resume, you can post an ad on the site that will stay posted for 45 days. The ad post is basically like a classified ad indicating what type of job you are looking for and a short explanation as to why you would be ideal for that kind of job. You could also provide a link to your resume if you have it posted online someplace else.

Career Tools Other than Craigslist, all of the mentioned career and job websites provide a variety of career tools that you can use to help you out. These career tools include the following:

Resume tutorials which explain how to create a proper resume. Sample resumes are also available to give you a general idea of how a resume should look. Usually, you will also find guidelines for writing a good cover letter in this section.

Interview tips which help prepare you for a job interview. You will typically find tips on the things you should and should not do during an interview. Also, you will find a list of questions you would normally get asked in an interview and how you should answer each of them.

Career assessment tests which are aimed at helping you identify the career you are best suited for. In these tests, you will be asked a series of questions about the type of person you are and your answers, once you've completed the test, will be used to provide a list of careers that would best suit you.

All of these are fantastic tools to have at your disposal. They can be very helpful especially for someone looking for a job for the very first time.

Despite the limitations of Craigslist, it is still a useful website when looking for a job. One good thing about Craigslist is that it allows you to quickly and easily search for jobs in different cities since it has a list of cities to search on the right-hand side of the website.

Monster.com, Yahoo! Jobs and Career Builder are all pretty similar in terms of what they have to offer. All of them can be used to search for jobs in both methods; you can post your resume on any of them and all of them have a variety of career tools available. The best option would probably be to try all of three of them to see which one you prefer.

Regardless of which website you decide to use, it will hopefully be a big help to you in finding a new job. Good luck!